In this video, aired on Venezuelan State TV last year, Maduro shamelessly walks us through his get-out-the-vote plan for the July 30th, 2017 National Constituent Assembly (ANC) election, a strategy that would become the go-to playbook for every subsequent election since.

It relies on the then-recently created Carnet de la Patria— an ID card with a QR code for data storage that is required in order to benefit from social programs and government subsidies— as a means of social coercion through extortion.

Since its inception in January 2017, the Carnet de la Patria has become a powerful tool for procuring and processing big data related to the behavior patterns of the Venezuelan electorate that can’t afford to forgo Maduro’s handouts—basically, most of the population. Through its vast media hegemony, the Maduro regime has convinced us that they know exactly who votes, and exactly who you voted for.

It matters little whether this threat is real or perceived: most people can’t afford to risk their paltry food rations in order to find out. So it pretty much comes down to “vote for me if you want food, starve if you want to make a point.”

"Venezuela is a champion in democracy, in democratic elections, as proven twice within the last twelve months and more than a dozen times since 1999. Never mind that the lunatic west doesn’t want to accept it – simply because the west – the US and her handlers – and her European vassals, cannot tolerate a socialist country prospering – one that is so close to the empire’s border and on top of it, loaded with natural riches, like oil and minerals. Venezuela’s economic success could send intellectual “left-wing” shock waves to the dumbed and numbed American populace, with shrapnel ricocheting all the way to blindfolded Europe.

That would be terrible. That’s why Venezuela must be economically strangled, literally, by illegal sanctions, by totally unlawful outside interventions within sovereign Venezuela, by corrupting internal food and medicine distribution, literally buying off bus drivers to stay home rather than driving their assigned routes to take people from home to work and vice-versa; and corrupting truck drivers not to deliver the merchandise, so that supermarket shelves are empty.

On 20 May 2018 Venezuela held another peaceful and absolutely democratic Presidential Elections, witnessed by international observers from more than 40 countries, including former President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, and former President of Spain, José Luis Zapatero. They all have confirmed the transparency of the Venezuelan electoral system and called upon the international community to respect the election results. Indeed, the United States as well as Europe could learn a lot from the Venezuelan electoral process and from Venezuelan democracy.

There is no doubt by any member of the high-powered and professional electoral observation delegations that the Venezuelan elections were correct and that Nicolas Maduro has legitimately been re-elected with 68% of the votes for the next 6 years – 2019 to 2025. The “low” turn-out of 54% is blamed by the west on Venezuela for barring the opposition candidates and opposition parties from voting. In fact, the turn-out is “low”, because of the west (EU and US) instigating the opposition to boycotting the elections. Under these circumstances, 54% is a great turnout, especially when compared to the only slightly higher number – 55.7% – of Americans who went to the polls in 2016, when Trump was elected; and 58% in 2012, for Obama’s second term."

MIAMI — When the International Monetary Fund predicted this year that hyperinflation in Venezuela could top 13,000 percent, it seemed as if the South American country’s economic outlook could not get any worse.

It just did.

With the situation in the country deteriorating faster than expected, the IMF has unveiled a far more severe prognosis, saying that Venezuela’s hyperinflation is poised to reach an annualized rate of 1 million percent by year’s end.

That inflation rate is set to catapult socialist Venezuela into a rogue’s gallery of nations that have suffered the worst inflation rates in history.

Venezuela’s “is one of the most severe hyperinflation situations that we’ve known about since the beginning of the 20th century,” said Robert Rennhack, deputy director of the IMF’s Western Hemisphere Department.

According to a study by Steve H. Hanke, a professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins University, Venezuela’s inflationary spiral as of May ranked as the 23rd highest ever recorded. The worst case on file remains Hungary after World War II, when inflation ran so rampant that prices doubled every 15 hours. More recently, Zimbabwe in the late 2000s and the former Yugoslavia in the mid-1990s saw peaks requiring calculators to sort out snowballing rates.

Venezuela’s inflation is soaring as the economy has been broken by failed socialist policies, corruption and a collapsing oil industry. In addition, President Nicolás Maduro — the anointed successor of Hugo Chávez, who died in 2013 — has sought to cling to power by weakening institutions, packing the courts and, his critics say, stealing elections.

Bills of the near-worthless local currency, the bolívar, are scarce — with the government having a hard time even paying for the paper needed to print them. Instead, the government is simply creating reams of electronic money paid into bank accounts, meaning that even small transactions are increasingly being done by bank cards and money transfers rather than in cash.

Maduro has tried to fix the problem, even creating a cyber-currency, the petro, which is theoretically backed by oil supplies. But nothing has worked.

The most extreme solutions in other countries have included abandoning local currencies altogether and adopting, for instance, the U.S. dollar. Yet such a move may be considered anathema in Venezuela, where Maduro has decried the United States as “the empire” out to destroy his nation.

Yaimy Flores, a 30-year-old Caracas housewife whose husband, a janitor, earns the minimum wage of 5,196,000 bolívares a month — worth about $3 at the black-market rate — said the family income can stretch to buy only two pounds of rice and a pound of cheese each month. They receive lentils, corn flour and a few other items via a government program. But the family has mostly cut out proteins and can no longer afford soaps and shampoos.

“We now have a tiny bit of soap left,” Flores said. “What we do is cut it in parts so that we’re conscious of how much we should use. I don’t know what our plan is when we finish that soap. I haven’t bought shampoo since last year.”

The IMF may even be underestimating the severity of Venezuela’s hyperinflation. Ecoanalitica, a Caracas-based financial firm, predicts that the inflation rate will shoot well past 1 million, reaching 1.4 million percent by December.

For a country that was once South America’s richest per capita, “it means a brutal cycle of impoverishment,” said Asdrúbal Oliveros, director of Ecoanalitica. “For a majority of Venezuelans that depend on their jobs and don’t have dollar savings or receive help from their family members abroad, an inflation like this one, that reaches more than 1 million, condemns them to poverty in a drastic way.”

Maduro's very much like tЯump in the way he spouts complete and utter bollocks. With oil over $70, his country should be quids in but he's fucked up his country's production and most of what they produce goes to China to pay off loans he's already squandered.

President Nicolas Maduro late Wednesday announced a two-week delay to a planned currency redenomination to Aug. 20, when Venezuela will lop five zeroes off the refurbished bolivar and also link it to the country’s Petro cryptocurrency.

By “anchoring” the Sovereign Bolivar, as the new currency will be called, the Petro will help stabilize the economy, Maduro said in a speech on state television.

The government’s goal is to “stabilize and change the country’s monetary life in a radical way,” Maduro said surrounded by his economic team. Venezuela needs an “economic revolution,” he said.

Since Maduro took power in 2013, the currency has become virtually worthless amid crashing oil prices and unchecked state spending. Acute shortages of anything from paper money to basic goods have added to the misery in Venezuela, where inflation is set to reach 1 million percent by year-end, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Maduro’s initial redenomination plan called for slashing three zeroes from the Strong Bolivar notes to be replaced with the Sovereign Bolivar. This new delay comes after Maduro postponed a planned June rollout until Aug. 4.

Maduro also signed a decree to assign the Orinoco Oil Belt’s Ayacucho 2 Block to the central bank as a way of bolstering its international reserves. The Ayacucho 2 block contains 29.3 billion barrels of oil, he said. Additionally, he sent a decree to the National Constituent Assembly for approval regarding changing the current law on foreign exchange crimes.

“Let’s restore the nation’s purchasing power and productivity,” Maduro said, calling on Venezuelans to support his economic moves. “Why not? What’s the problem. Continue as we are in the agony of the oil economy?”